High Bless rush strategy :(

[Foodstamp]

Wouldn't these bless strategies perform well on large maps too? I mean the player has 9w9f so it is not like he is going to be lacking on high end late game spells right?

[DominionsFan]

Graeme Dice said:

I'm sorry, but that's an absurd exaggeration. There is no way that the forces those nations could gather on a 10 province per player map would be able to capture the C'tissian castle by turn 8. This is especially true with the imprisoned pretender necessary for a dual bless strategy.

Just an example. Turn 4: QM has rushed my niefel capital with a mictlan [IIRC] uber bless strategy. The map was silent seas, and the game was a 5 FFA.
I've also rushed many players before turn 5-6 with high bless sacred builds in blitzes.

[Boron]

Gandalf Parker said:
This might be my fault. I pushed for big maps and large games. Balancing for that might have knocked the blitzes out

No need to apology Gandalf .
I myself e.g. love both, large maps in SP and occasional longterm MPs and small maps in blitzes.

Gandalf Parker said:
Someone will always be too good for blitzes. But others are "too good" for large maps, or many player games with alliances. Im not sure if it could be fixed for one game type without messing up the others. Maybe if a version of DOm was created just for small blitz maps.

Only time will tell, but at least some bless rush nations might do as well in longterm games too.

And if a blitz strat can kill another player immediately, unless the longterm mp map is very huge it can happen there too. And the advantage of getting a 2nd castle, extra gems, maybe some searched provinces etc. can be a nice boost. If you were lucky to have an ultrabless strat and neighbor someone who cannot counter it adequatly such a rush might boost your longterm potential a lot too in that game.

So maybe longterm games might not be that different .

There is more diplomacy of course, but at least those ppl who also play blitzes know then too well how scary an uberbless strat is in earlygame and thus are hesitant to gangbang the player who uses a blessrush in earlygame.

We have exactly this situation in the DDD-Pbem currently. Jurri took an uberbless, but all of his neighbors are scared and dare not to attack him. Will be definately interesting, i think Jurri has a very good chance of winning this game, especially because it is a VP game, so he doesn't have to continue till lategame where he might be more vulnerable.

[Foodstamp]

Wow, you guys are making multiplayer sound depressing at any level. I didn't know the blesses were so devistating on larger FFA maps as well.

I guess I can hope that the players in my current MP games chose to have fun and be original over using someone else's strategy to try to secure easy victories.

[Belcarl]

Haven't encountered a super bless strat in MP yet, so just throwing out some ideas.

What about Mind burn + Communion? Thau lvl 2 should be able to dish this out if you can recruit astral mages. So Ermor, pythium and C'tis should be able to paralyze and kill expensive sacred units with MR below 13...

Nature mages gets Vine arrows at Evoc lvl 2. does 14+ damage and entangles the enemy.

For low strenght enemies (Mictlan?) Conjuration 1 gives tangle vines.

Thaumaturgy lvl 2, Bonds of fire. Requires F1.
Alteration lvl 2, Earth meld. Req E2
Alteration lvl 1, False fetters, Req A2

Combine this with some long range attacks like archers, or artillery mages to actually kill off the Blessed troops.

So basically Blood and death are the paths with problems if you cannot get lvl 2 mages of a certain path to spamm the above spells. In theory that is....

[dirtywick]

Rage might work, you could get them beating up eachother.

There's also Decay for Death which I've had some success with killing units, but it's not that reliable.

Dust to Dust works against undead.

Rust Mist, Evoc 3, works wonders against high prot units blessed or not, but your mages aim with it is spotty at times.

[alexti]

Belcarl said:
Haven't encountered a super bless strat in MP yet, so just throwing out some ideas.

What about Mind burn + Communion? Thau lvl 2 should be able to dish this out if you can recruit astral mages. So Ermor, pythium and C'tis should be able to paralyze and kill expensive sacred units with MR below 13...

The problem is that most of effective low-level are single target. I can see Caelum managing to put some sort of defense - recruiting the cheapest indies just to build up numbers and electrocuting blessed enemies while they're getting through the militia screen. But Caelum has cheap serahps who almost never miss and neither MR nor morale helps vs lightning. For almost everyone else it's worse - more expensive mages, less reliable spell.

Fire nations get some reasonable spells (poor precision but area effects), maybe they can do something too. Otherwise, I guess the only way is to hide in the water

[B0rsuk]

My suggestion:

- extra bless effects don't work until your pretender is awake.

I don't see why rushers should only get benefits from Dormant and Imprisoned status.
It could be extended to scales, too. Otherwise what's the point of having dormant/imprisoned pretender if it doesn't handicap you in any way ? Free design points ?
By the way: why do some nations get essentially free design points just because they prefer heat or cold ? They get to have an annoying (for most others) dominion, and getting paid for it ?

[DominionsFan]

Foodstamp said:
I didn't know the blesses were so devistating on larger FFA maps as well.

They are not. It helps a lot however.

[WraithLord]

I find this thread's discussion disturbing.
Bless strat. was already very powerful in dom-II and I would have hoped that in dom-III it would be toned down, not up.

Having ubber bless become a no-brainer is not fun.
But, I'm still not convinced it is indeed so.
For starters, its a good thing that few nations have a lot to gain from bless strat. Secondly, there are counters to ubber bless, though I digress that most are available through research which is now harder.

I think that adding some obvious counters and limitations to bless might bring more diversity to the game. I like the idea of "dispel" bless by priests and/or mages. Also it would be nice to have a single target spell that causes damage or fatigue or something negative to a blessed unit, and also larger scale versions of this spell.

EDIT,

I also like the idea of having the bless effect tied to Pretenders arrival, so each season closer to its coming will add this much to the bless effect, gaining full effect when the god arrives.